Better Together
Provider altafiber Teams Up with Governments,
Co-Ops to Bring Broadband to All
By Amy Maclean
Since 2020, altafiber has developed a growing stable of public and private partnerships to expand high-speed internet across the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky region. By the end of July, it had 12 such partnerships in place and it expects plenty more in the future.
Its first fiber partnership was with Butler Rural Electric Cooperative, which approached altafiber about extending fiber to its sub-stations and switch locations for a “smart grid” initiative it was working on. Eventually, altafiber reached a partnership agreement with BREC in February 2020 to extend high-speed broadband to approximately 2,100 of its unserved members. The fiber build to the initial 2,100 members was completed in 2021, and was deemed a success in terms of subscriber penetration.
That wasn’t the end of the story, though. In 2022, altafiber announced a commitment to extend high-speed broadband without any additional funding from BREC to all remaining members. Construction began earlier this year, and altafiber expects to have all 10,000 BREC members served by the first half of 2024.
“The common theme with all of the cooperatives [we’ve talked to] has been… the high standards they hold themselves to with their members, and the quality of service they receive today with electric, and the requirement to have those same standards with any partnership around broadband,” says Greg Wheeler, altafiber’s President of Business Markets.
Most of altafiber’s partnerships are with local governments. Just last month the City of Dublin, Ohio, selected it following a Request for Proposal process to provide competitive access to internet service of 10 gigabits for residents. The company will be investing roughly $35 million in this fiber optic network and will provide additional tech infrastructure, which could be used to fund a City Innovation Center or public WiFi initiatives.
Competition in the RFP process continues to increase as more federal funding comes into play. Initially, altafiber was usually only competing against the incumbent cable provider and an occasional fixed wireless company. But now national providers focused in open-access fiber networks are in the mix. “We are seeing six+ respondents in some of our recent RFP responses,” says Wheeler.
But it’s not just the competition in RFPs that has changed. “Communities are looking past the immediate issue of providing high-speed broadband to residents and are looking to also use the partnership as an economic development tool for the community,” explains Wheeler. “In recent conversations we are finding ourselves being asked to deploy XGS-PON to support multi-gig product offerings, provide support for Innovation Centers to develop technology and economic development for the community, custom pricing plans for the community and in one instance to help support a county-led middle mile project through long-term financial commitments to the project.”
Getting a partnership agreement done these days may be a bit more complicated, but altafiber is committed to finding ones that make sense. “Some of our original partnerships are coming close to being completed, and some of the biggest rewards have come from the support we have received in the community and the letters we receive from residents thanking us for bringing them high-speed broadband,” says Wheeler. “Access to high-speed broadband is taken for granted by many of us, but when you hear the stories of what school children and parents were doing to get access to the internet, you know at the end of the day you made a difference and changed the fabric of the community forever.”